New Mutants #24 Review

Mike Carey concludes his great X-Men crossover event.

Let's go way back. When the first images for Age of X came out I rolled my eyes and stated, "Dear God, not another X-Men event." After reading the first chapter of the story I stated, "I'm not sure I like a story that starts in the middle and expects you to catch up later." And now finishing the final issue of this crossover event I state, "I can't believe Mike Carey was able to pull that off!" That's not a slight to Carey, that's a slight to X-Men events. And somehow, someway, Age of X was able to overcome the expectations and all preconceptions in order to become one of the best X-Men stories that I can think of in recent memory.

I thought it important to tell you how much skepticism I had towards this project in order to give you context as to how good a story like this would have to be to impress me as much as this one did. I won't say that Age of X reinvented the wheel, or was even all that original in concept. But, the way in which AoX was told, the universe it created, the art that brought it to life, and the characters that were altered to give us unique versions of familiar templates is downright impressive. There is a page at the end of this issue where Carey, Mann, and Kurth pat themselves on the back for a job well done, and while oftentimes something like this feels a bit self-indulgent, in a case of a complete success like this one, I couldn't help but almost feel proud for these guys when reading their blurbs.

Without spoiling too much, I will mention that New Mutants #24 was able to cleanly and effectively close out Age of X. It doesn't solve every last lingering storyline, as some mystery has to be left for the fallout coming in future issues, but it does give us a satisfying ending that doesn't feel like it needed to trick us, get dark and moody, or even do the 'happily ever after' bit. After the end of the last issue you pretty much knew all that was going on in the AoX, so this issue just served as the deconstruction of the world, and more importantly, how it affected all those that were trapped within it. As far as endings go for storylines contained within continuing serialized comic series, this was about as good as you can expect to have gotten.

With all the praise given, you'd expect that I had no problems with this issue... but you'd be wrong. While Mike Carey wrote a wonderful character driven script, the majority of the issue still took place around a battlefield which had little to no impact on the story after the reveal of the world's creator. Viewing AoX like a film, this would have been just a loud bit of action to signify the end of the world. So while I wasn't invested in the battle scenes, I at least understand why they're there. The other part that I had issues with was Steve Kurth's art. I've praised Kurth in previous reviews, and will continue to praise him here for telling the story well by capturing the drama and action completely. My problem though, came from the consistency of his work. Sometimes the characters looked great, and other times they didn't look like themselves any longer - i.e. Charles Xavier didn't look like himself in many of the close up panels across the issue. Being that the comic flowed as well as it did however, these problems can be overlooked as nitpicks that many will gloss right over.

How often can you say that an X-Men event, or any event for that matter, was able to truly surprise you? In this case, I was surprised by the quality of the story, but also in the fact that it was able to sustain my interest even while increasing the action. By not forgetting that characters come first, Carey was able to craft a unique story which features all the aspects of a good X-Men tale without getting bogged down in the powers and fighting which most writers lazily fall back on. So, kudos to all involved, and thanks for the entertaining story!